John Eager Howard

Howard, the founder and first director of endocrinology at Johns Hopkins, was born in Baltimore County, Maryland. The great-great grandson of Colonel John Eager Howard, a hero of the American Revolution, Howard graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in 1924, and earned an M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1928.

After two years at Massachusetts General Hospital, he returned to Johns Hopkins for his residency and fellowship. He then joined the faculty of the School of Medicine and served on the staff of The Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he remained throughout his career. He was appointed associate professor in 1946 and professor in 1960. From 1957 through 1971, he also served as chief of medicine at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore.

Howard conducted research on calcium metabolism, developed a test with Reed Ellsworth to measure responses to parathyroid hormone, and developed a test for unilateral renal hypertension. He received many honors, including the Modern Medicine Award for Distinguished Achievement in 1964 and the Passano Prize in 1968 for his work on renal hypertension and the endocrine control of calcium metabolism.

In 1968, Howard was named professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins, and in 1983, the John Eager Howard Chair in Endocrinology and Metabolism was established at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine by contributions from friends, colleagues, former patients, and students.

He was a member of the council of The Endocrine Society, and served as its president from 1960 to 1961. He also was a member of the council of the American Diabetes Association, and served as president of the American Clinical and Climatological Association in 1973. At the National Institutes of Health, Howard served as a consultant to the Clinical Center from 1963 to 1968, and a member of the Arthritis and Metabolic Disease Program Project Committee from 1964 to 1967. He also was a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism and the Johns Hopkins Medical Journal.